Education nowadays as well as the process within it is measured more in terms of extensity than of intensity. Hence, the more relevant burden of academic scholarship in the present era is to locate the concrete vantage point where extensity and intensity may fully be coordinated to effect the realization of the truly educated individual. The lopsided thrust of education and its required features focuses more on the superficial in the matter, manner and method that it possesses. This is in the area of extensity and the problem with the unilateral emphasis on it is the inadvertent isolation of intensity which capitalizes on depth and quality. At the end of the road, we find extensively "educated" individuals who are more particularly interested in the degress attached to their names than in the essential depth of what they possess in the intellect.
Thinking aloud, it could be surmised reasonably that despite the presence of an array of multi-degreed academics, the general landscape of national life is still seen to be retrogressive and less promising. More realistically, the academe and real life do not match up and fit well together for what is taught in the academe are matters so artificial, real life does not need them and real life is so concrete the academe, replete with abstract notions peddled by "schizophrenic" professors, is just a superfluous nuisance.
The intensity of education lies in the fact thet it should be a realistic reflection--a committed theorizing--on what is actually experienced in life. It should be a deeper exploration into the dynamics and mechanics of actual life-events interconnected among themselves and constitutive of a system that prevails at a certain moment of ongoing history. Such education can only lead to a better understanding not of the theory that expresses the understanding but of the practical life given interpretation by the theory. In this condition and situation, real authorities are a common sight and their contribution is not to the growing statistics of half-cooked doctoral degree holders but to the economic vibrancy, poltical stability, social empowerment and cultural intensification.
To be more specific at this point of the discussion, the dialectical notion of progress that characterizes authentic education as an intense reflection of actual practices in social life should permeate every process operationalized in it in the forms or instruction, reseach, and extension.In other words, dialectics operates not only in terms of extensity but in terms of intensity as components of the entire system complement each other to achieve a higher level of development.
(c) Ruel F. Pepa
Friday, December 4, 2009
Thursday, December 3, 2009
THE ESCHATON AND BEYOND
(apocalyptic messages at the threshold of hades)
I.
I SAW THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS
i saw the twilight of the gods
when the once powerful were stripped
of their scepter like a child whose
lollipop was snatched from her mouth.
i saw how the gods had fallen
and are now roaming the desert
looking for a heaven in the
hell that they made. i have seen the
gods that refuse to die because
they know that gods are supposed to
be eternal even if worms
and maggots have consumed their souls.
II.
ETERNITY IN THE WIND
eternity at the tip
of a bullet that dips in
the warm blood of hope and dreams
creates haunting ghosts and goblins
that inhabit the wasteland
where the howlings of the wild
dominate the wind and smoke.
III.
WHO WILL TREAD THE PATH OF DEATH
who will tread the path of death
when the laughter of haughty barbarians
fill the air that stinks with the smell
of sweat and burps of cheap liquor
amid a carousing crowd at the thick
of a revelry to celebrate a distorted life?
who will embrace the two-edged sword
of desperation when fear reigns high
in the heart of an impostor escaping
from the sight of a deep ravine
and now makes his way towards the womb
of the dark forest that surrounds
the mire of death ready to swallow even his soul?
IV.
DESTRUCTION AMIDST ARMAGEDDON
the last storm has brought heaps of debris
burying corpses of shattered dreams
washed out in muddy floods. so that e'en
the pain of hopelessness is leveled
off by the wings of lost sanity.
branches are now breaking once again
and the whistling wind intensifies.
the sky is getting dark and no one
dares to witness the firepower of
destruction amidst armageddon.
V.
IN THE SILENCE OF WARS' CLASSIC TRAGEDIES
the steel-cold nights have long stolen
the eagle-spirit that animates the warrior's will,
once soaring high over battles among principalities and powers
the towers have long been abandoned and the battlefield
is now a desolation, no more offensives and rear guards
in the silence of wars' classic tragedies.
the halls of fame have long been ruined;
memories and honors, all scattered and trampled,
broken on dusty pavements, forgotten, desecrated.
for in the skirmishes and collisions
of violent forces in the arena of earthly life
there is not a single victor; only losers and tragic praises.
I.
I SAW THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS
i saw the twilight of the gods
when the once powerful were stripped
of their scepter like a child whose
lollipop was snatched from her mouth.
i saw how the gods had fallen
and are now roaming the desert
looking for a heaven in the
hell that they made. i have seen the
gods that refuse to die because
they know that gods are supposed to
be eternal even if worms
and maggots have consumed their souls.
II.
ETERNITY IN THE WIND
eternity at the tip
of a bullet that dips in
the warm blood of hope and dreams
creates haunting ghosts and goblins
that inhabit the wasteland
where the howlings of the wild
dominate the wind and smoke.
III.
WHO WILL TREAD THE PATH OF DEATH
who will tread the path of death
when the laughter of haughty barbarians
fill the air that stinks with the smell
of sweat and burps of cheap liquor
amid a carousing crowd at the thick
of a revelry to celebrate a distorted life?
who will embrace the two-edged sword
of desperation when fear reigns high
in the heart of an impostor escaping
from the sight of a deep ravine
and now makes his way towards the womb
of the dark forest that surrounds
the mire of death ready to swallow even his soul?
IV.
DESTRUCTION AMIDST ARMAGEDDON
the last storm has brought heaps of debris
burying corpses of shattered dreams
washed out in muddy floods. so that e'en
the pain of hopelessness is leveled
off by the wings of lost sanity.
branches are now breaking once again
and the whistling wind intensifies.
the sky is getting dark and no one
dares to witness the firepower of
destruction amidst armageddon.
V.
IN THE SILENCE OF WARS' CLASSIC TRAGEDIES
the steel-cold nights have long stolen
the eagle-spirit that animates the warrior's will,
once soaring high over battles among principalities and powers
the towers have long been abandoned and the battlefield
is now a desolation, no more offensives and rear guards
in the silence of wars' classic tragedies.
the halls of fame have long been ruined;
memories and honors, all scattered and trampled,
broken on dusty pavements, forgotten, desecrated.
for in the skirmishes and collisions
of violent forces in the arena of earthly life
there is not a single victor; only losers and tragic praises.
Friday, November 20, 2009
RANDOM THOUGHTS - 2
I. Values and Rules of Behavior
Phenomenologically, "behavior" may be viewed in two successive levels: the pre-reflective and the reflective.
On the one hand, "behavior," which is spontaneous in the pre-reflective level is based on the inaccessible and unconscious biological aspect of being. On the other hand, "behavior" in the reflective level is dealt with deliberately. The non-thematic character of "behavior" in the former level becomes thematic in the latter. "Behavior" in its non-thematic form is absent in human consciousness. However, the active participation of human consciousness in dealing with "behavior" gives way to the exploitation of its very nature as the noesis (active consciouness) reflects upon "behavior" as its noema (object of consciousness).
Hence, "rules of behavior" can only emerge at the reflective level. It cannot do so at the pre-reflective level because "behavior" as it takes place in this level precedes consciousness and therefore, does not involve explicit "rules." "Rules" emanate only when human consciousness perceives certain aspects in the natural processes occurring in every dimension of reality as necessary and significant to grasp realistically and creatively the relation of this dimension with human existence.
This perspecive gives us a glimpse of the relation between values and rules of behavior. Both basically emanate from the stream of consciousness occurring in the reflective level. Both are concerned with what is desirable:values, in general, arise as Sartre's "being-in-itself" (or a human being who is always open to possibilities) constitutes objects as desirable while rules of behavior emerge as s/he tries to put in methodical order his attempt to internalize that which is desirable. Therefore, the human being, as the "for-itself," creates his own values and rules of behvior whose characters are based on every human surpassing.
As the "for-itself" seeks to be united with the "self" in a progressive and unceasing struggle to properly understand the cause of his becoming in the context of human historicity, values--the desirable objectives of all surpassings--and rules of behavior--the ordered and systematic manner of dealing rationally with the desirable objectives-- will always remain as the life-blood of all human attempts in creativity.
II. Is Survival a Value?
Survival in the non-cosncious plane of being is not a value. It spontaneously runs along the flow of implicit biological order wherein human consciousness has no primal focus. Such nature is seen among animals and even newborn babies. They are driven by an instictive force toward a struggle for survival where in deliberation is non-operative. An unmensch (Nietzsche) through which drive for surbvival is seen is not consciously aware of what ought to be done. What it does is simply an event in the realm of unconscious regularities. Through constant regularities occurring between its biologival structure and the milieu into which it has been adapted, bilogical needs ar spontaneously generated and do conform to what is.
However, the explicitation of "survival" leads us to a higher plane. here, survival is thematically presented to human consciousness and thereby acquires a twofold character sujectively dependent upon each individual human being to whom survival becomes an issue. To him who believes that existence is only an accident, survival which is a by-product of this accident is just another accident to which his entire existence is tied-up until the point when he will ultimately disintegrate to nothing. Survival, therefore, in this instance, is not a value--a desirable objective of all human undertakings--but simply an "unsought-for" drive that is inseparable from the necessities spontaneously generated in the unconsious biological dimension of reality. For such types of human, values are only those which he can freely desire within the confines of conscious reflection, wtih no connection whatsoever to the the mysterious stream of blind natural processes completely uncontrolled by human sanity.
But to him who believes that his being caught amidst the complexities of human existence allows him to perceive the necessities generated by the biological processes independent of rationality, survival, from its subjection in the lower level, is raised to a higher point in the human consciousness where it is signified in the on-going motion of human reality. It, thus, becomes a value.
From the consciousness of the situation where difficulties of living and the problem of the deprivation of the right to live arise, the status of survival is raised to become a value. However, in the final analysis, we are able to find out that these difficulties and problems somehow become a fact of human existence only because man himself created them.
III. Acquisition of Values
Values are acquired through social practice. To constitute reality, the human being is caught in a dialectical relation with the world, By the very nature of this relation, the human being consciously perceives the necessities involved to continuously participate in the historic process. His knowledge of these necessities is a dimension of freedom, for, upon knowing the complexities of living, the human being's will is then left in an autonomous situation to reflect and act upon it, to change what can possibly be changed.
In action and reflection--praxis--values are acquired; for how can man, the "being-for-itself," go on in his struggle to be united with the "self" if there is not a value that will give meaning to his aspirations? The human being in his becoming is always confronted by possibilities because it is a facticity of his existence to be incomplete--always lacking as s/he strides on new situations from moment ot moment.
IV. Fundamental Values Crucial for National Development
There are threee fundamental values crucial in dealing with the arduous task of social transformation for national development. These are freedom, responsibility and creativity. Every humanist value that has been given an eminent place in the heart of the human being as s/he partakes in the task of moving toward higher and greater refinement follows from the primacy of these three values.
From the necessities of human existence geared toward national development, we can fully harness the value of freedom in terms of decision-making . In the process of being immersed in such kind of situations, i.e., to keep oneself always in touch with what is obtaining in the superstructure of the society, responsibility is definitely significant. Both freedom and responsibility are, however, futile if they are not perfectly joined in unison with our wish to create a just and humanized society.
(c)Ruel Pepa
Phenomenologically, "behavior" may be viewed in two successive levels: the pre-reflective and the reflective.
On the one hand, "behavior," which is spontaneous in the pre-reflective level is based on the inaccessible and unconscious biological aspect of being. On the other hand, "behavior" in the reflective level is dealt with deliberately. The non-thematic character of "behavior" in the former level becomes thematic in the latter. "Behavior" in its non-thematic form is absent in human consciousness. However, the active participation of human consciousness in dealing with "behavior" gives way to the exploitation of its very nature as the noesis (active consciouness) reflects upon "behavior" as its noema (object of consciousness).
Hence, "rules of behavior" can only emerge at the reflective level. It cannot do so at the pre-reflective level because "behavior" as it takes place in this level precedes consciousness and therefore, does not involve explicit "rules." "Rules" emanate only when human consciousness perceives certain aspects in the natural processes occurring in every dimension of reality as necessary and significant to grasp realistically and creatively the relation of this dimension with human existence.
This perspecive gives us a glimpse of the relation between values and rules of behavior. Both basically emanate from the stream of consciousness occurring in the reflective level. Both are concerned with what is desirable:values, in general, arise as Sartre's "being-in-itself" (or a human being who is always open to possibilities) constitutes objects as desirable while rules of behavior emerge as s/he tries to put in methodical order his attempt to internalize that which is desirable. Therefore, the human being, as the "for-itself," creates his own values and rules of behvior whose characters are based on every human surpassing.
As the "for-itself" seeks to be united with the "self" in a progressive and unceasing struggle to properly understand the cause of his becoming in the context of human historicity, values--the desirable objectives of all surpassings--and rules of behavior--the ordered and systematic manner of dealing rationally with the desirable objectives-- will always remain as the life-blood of all human attempts in creativity.
II. Is Survival a Value?
Survival in the non-cosncious plane of being is not a value. It spontaneously runs along the flow of implicit biological order wherein human consciousness has no primal focus. Such nature is seen among animals and even newborn babies. They are driven by an instictive force toward a struggle for survival where in deliberation is non-operative. An unmensch (Nietzsche) through which drive for surbvival is seen is not consciously aware of what ought to be done. What it does is simply an event in the realm of unconscious regularities. Through constant regularities occurring between its biologival structure and the milieu into which it has been adapted, bilogical needs ar spontaneously generated and do conform to what is.
However, the explicitation of "survival" leads us to a higher plane. here, survival is thematically presented to human consciousness and thereby acquires a twofold character sujectively dependent upon each individual human being to whom survival becomes an issue. To him who believes that existence is only an accident, survival which is a by-product of this accident is just another accident to which his entire existence is tied-up until the point when he will ultimately disintegrate to nothing. Survival, therefore, in this instance, is not a value--a desirable objective of all human undertakings--but simply an "unsought-for" drive that is inseparable from the necessities spontaneously generated in the unconsious biological dimension of reality. For such types of human, values are only those which he can freely desire within the confines of conscious reflection, wtih no connection whatsoever to the the mysterious stream of blind natural processes completely uncontrolled by human sanity.
But to him who believes that his being caught amidst the complexities of human existence allows him to perceive the necessities generated by the biological processes independent of rationality, survival, from its subjection in the lower level, is raised to a higher point in the human consciousness where it is signified in the on-going motion of human reality. It, thus, becomes a value.
From the consciousness of the situation where difficulties of living and the problem of the deprivation of the right to live arise, the status of survival is raised to become a value. However, in the final analysis, we are able to find out that these difficulties and problems somehow become a fact of human existence only because man himself created them.
III. Acquisition of Values
Values are acquired through social practice. To constitute reality, the human being is caught in a dialectical relation with the world, By the very nature of this relation, the human being consciously perceives the necessities involved to continuously participate in the historic process. His knowledge of these necessities is a dimension of freedom, for, upon knowing the complexities of living, the human being's will is then left in an autonomous situation to reflect and act upon it, to change what can possibly be changed.
In action and reflection--praxis--values are acquired; for how can man, the "being-for-itself," go on in his struggle to be united with the "self" if there is not a value that will give meaning to his aspirations? The human being in his becoming is always confronted by possibilities because it is a facticity of his existence to be incomplete--always lacking as s/he strides on new situations from moment ot moment.
IV. Fundamental Values Crucial for National Development
There are threee fundamental values crucial in dealing with the arduous task of social transformation for national development. These are freedom, responsibility and creativity. Every humanist value that has been given an eminent place in the heart of the human being as s/he partakes in the task of moving toward higher and greater refinement follows from the primacy of these three values.
From the necessities of human existence geared toward national development, we can fully harness the value of freedom in terms of decision-making . In the process of being immersed in such kind of situations, i.e., to keep oneself always in touch with what is obtaining in the superstructure of the society, responsibility is definitely significant. Both freedom and responsibility are, however, futile if they are not perfectly joined in unison with our wish to create a just and humanized society.
(c)Ruel Pepa
Friday, October 23, 2009
VALUABLE TIME FOR THE RIPE IN AGE
(A dynamic-equivalence enhancement of a translation of Mario de Andrade’s “El Valioso Tiempo de los Maduros”)
I reckoned my age and discovered that I have fewer years to live henceforth . . . .
I seem like a man who was given a package of goodies and after eating some of them first, later fell into a deep reflection upon realizing that he didn’t have much left anymore.
I no longer have time to spend for endless meetings that achieve nothing as statutes, rules, procedures and regulations are discussed.
Neither do I have time to give my encouragement to senseless people who have not grown up despite their ages.
I cannot spare a moment with mediocrity in engagements where egos march in parade. I cannot stand the presence of manipulators and opportunists. I am upset by the presence of the envious whose objective is to degrade the competent and usurp their positions, talents and achievements. I detest, as I witness, situations where characters are assassinated in the name of securing a lucrative position. People are not mindful of substance; what matters are titles. I have limited time to talk about titles; I desire essence for my soul is in haste. . . .
Not much goodies left in the package anymore. . . .
I wish I could be with genuine human beings, real ones.
I wish I could laugh with them in their mistakes and be less arrogant like them in their triumphs . . . They who do not think they are special . . . They who do not abandon their responsibilities but uphold the value of human dignity.
And as I walk alone, I desire to be on the side of truth and honesty—the essential virtues that make life worth living.
I associate with people who are able to feel the hearts of others. . . .
People whose wisdom has been acquired through the tough lessons of life bestowing them with an ability to give a tender touch on others’ souls.
Yes, move fast and live with the passion achievable only in the prime of life. Far from my intent is to aimlessly squander the few goodies left. I’m certain what remains are more precious than those I’ve consumed so far.
I aspire to get to my goal fulfilled and in tranquility with my loved ones and with myself.
Let your wish be the same for any which way you go, you will surely get there.
English translation enhanced by:
Ruel F. Pepa
I reckoned my age and discovered that I have fewer years to live henceforth . . . .
I seem like a man who was given a package of goodies and after eating some of them first, later fell into a deep reflection upon realizing that he didn’t have much left anymore.
I no longer have time to spend for endless meetings that achieve nothing as statutes, rules, procedures and regulations are discussed.
Neither do I have time to give my encouragement to senseless people who have not grown up despite their ages.
I cannot spare a moment with mediocrity in engagements where egos march in parade. I cannot stand the presence of manipulators and opportunists. I am upset by the presence of the envious whose objective is to degrade the competent and usurp their positions, talents and achievements. I detest, as I witness, situations where characters are assassinated in the name of securing a lucrative position. People are not mindful of substance; what matters are titles. I have limited time to talk about titles; I desire essence for my soul is in haste. . . .
Not much goodies left in the package anymore. . . .
I wish I could be with genuine human beings, real ones.
I wish I could laugh with them in their mistakes and be less arrogant like them in their triumphs . . . They who do not think they are special . . . They who do not abandon their responsibilities but uphold the value of human dignity.
And as I walk alone, I desire to be on the side of truth and honesty—the essential virtues that make life worth living.
I associate with people who are able to feel the hearts of others. . . .
People whose wisdom has been acquired through the tough lessons of life bestowing them with an ability to give a tender touch on others’ souls.
Yes, move fast and live with the passion achievable only in the prime of life. Far from my intent is to aimlessly squander the few goodies left. I’m certain what remains are more precious than those I’ve consumed so far.
I aspire to get to my goal fulfilled and in tranquility with my loved ones and with myself.
Let your wish be the same for any which way you go, you will surely get there.
English translation enhanced by:
Ruel F. Pepa
"EL VALIOSO TIEMPO DE LOS MADUROS"
Mensaje de Mario de Andrade
(Poeta, novelista, ensayista y musicólogo brasileño)
“Conté mis años y descubrí, que tengo menos tiempo para vivir de aquí en adelante, que el que viví hasta ahora...
Me siento como aquel chico que ganó un paquete de golosinas: las primeras las comió con agrado, pero cuando percibió que quedaban pocas, comenzó a saborearlas profundamente.
Ya no tengo tiempo para reuniones interminables donde se discuten estatutos, normas, procedimientos y reglamentos internos, sabiendo que no se va a lograr nada.
Ya no tengo tiempo para soportar absurdas personas que, a pesar de su edad cronológica, no han crecido.
Ya no tengo tiempo para lidiar con mediocridades.
No quiero estar en reuniones donde desfilan egos inflados.
No tolero a maniobreros y ventajeros.
Me molestan los envidiosos que tratan de desacreditar a los más capaces para apropiarse de sus lugares, talentos y logros.
Detesto, si soy testigo, de los defectos que genera la lucha por un majestuoso cargo.
Las personas no discuten contenidos, apenas los títulos.
Mi tiempo es escaso como para discutir títulos.
Quiero la esencia, mi alma tiene prisa... Sin muchas golosinas en el paquete...
Quiero vivir al lado de gente humana, muy humana.
Que sepa reír de sus errores.
Que no se envanezca, con sus triunfos.
Que no se considere electa, antes de hora.
Que no huya de sus responsabilidades.
Que defienda la dignidad humana.
Y que desee tan sólo andar del lado de la verdad y la honradez.
Lo esencial es lo que hace que la vida valga la pena.
Quiero rodearme de gente que sepa tocar el corazón de las personas….
Gente a quien los golpes duros de la vida le enseñó a crecer con toques suaves en el alma.
Sí, tengo prisa, pero por vivir con la intensidad que sólo la madurez puede dar.
Pretendo no desperdiciar parte alguna, de las golosinas que me quedan… Estoy seguro que serán más exquisitas, que las que hasta ahora he comido.
Mi meta es llegar al final satisfecho y en paz con mis seres queridos y con mi conciencia.
Espero que la tuya sea la misma, porque de cualquier manera, llegarás..."
Mario de Andrade
(Poeta, novelista, ensayista y musicólogo brasileño)
“Conté mis años y descubrí, que tengo menos tiempo para vivir de aquí en adelante, que el que viví hasta ahora...
Me siento como aquel chico que ganó un paquete de golosinas: las primeras las comió con agrado, pero cuando percibió que quedaban pocas, comenzó a saborearlas profundamente.
Ya no tengo tiempo para reuniones interminables donde se discuten estatutos, normas, procedimientos y reglamentos internos, sabiendo que no se va a lograr nada.
Ya no tengo tiempo para soportar absurdas personas que, a pesar de su edad cronológica, no han crecido.
Ya no tengo tiempo para lidiar con mediocridades.
No quiero estar en reuniones donde desfilan egos inflados.
No tolero a maniobreros y ventajeros.
Me molestan los envidiosos que tratan de desacreditar a los más capaces para apropiarse de sus lugares, talentos y logros.
Detesto, si soy testigo, de los defectos que genera la lucha por un majestuoso cargo.
Las personas no discuten contenidos, apenas los títulos.
Mi tiempo es escaso como para discutir títulos.
Quiero la esencia, mi alma tiene prisa... Sin muchas golosinas en el paquete...
Quiero vivir al lado de gente humana, muy humana.
Que sepa reír de sus errores.
Que no se envanezca, con sus triunfos.
Que no se considere electa, antes de hora.
Que no huya de sus responsabilidades.
Que defienda la dignidad humana.
Y que desee tan sólo andar del lado de la verdad y la honradez.
Lo esencial es lo que hace que la vida valga la pena.
Quiero rodearme de gente que sepa tocar el corazón de las personas….
Gente a quien los golpes duros de la vida le enseñó a crecer con toques suaves en el alma.
Sí, tengo prisa, pero por vivir con la intensidad que sólo la madurez puede dar.
Pretendo no desperdiciar parte alguna, de las golosinas que me quedan… Estoy seguro que serán más exquisitas, que las que hasta ahora he comido.
Mi meta es llegar al final satisfecho y en paz con mis seres queridos y con mi conciencia.
Espero que la tuya sea la misma, porque de cualquier manera, llegarás..."
Mario de Andrade
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Feudalism and Colonialism—Alive and Kicking in the 21st Century: A More Reticent View of the Present Philippine Political Landscape
[A paper presented in the 2009 Sociology Forum held on 10 September 2009 at the University Training Center of the Mariano Marcos State University(MMSU) in Batac, Ilocos Norte ]
Ruel F. Pepa
Trinity University of Asia
A. A General Overview
Despite all the trappings of modern democratic mechanics—the superficial exteriorities institutionalized as official components of Philippine politics—the landscape of our realpolitik is still—as it has long been in generations—predominated by two vigorous sets of dynamics—socio-culturally feudal and economically colonial. About the socio-cultural dynamics, Prof. Jose Ma. Sison initially stresses in the text of his lecture at UP-Diliman on 25 April 1986 entitled “Crisis of Philippine Culture” that
“ . . . [C]ulture is not simply the ideological reflection of current forces and contradictions in the economy and politics. It is also the accumulation of notions, customs, habits and the like which date as far back as prehistory, and which persist in current circumstances for so long as there are carriers and they are part of the social psychology of the people.”
In this light, simply reflecting on the attitude of local elected leaders toward themselves reveals a common feudal character whose acquired meaning in ages has seemed to be as natural as it is mouthed with confident spontaneity: they are the “fathers” or the “mothers” of their respective constituencies—villages, municipalities, provinces, even the nation itself. Something essentially crucial is overshadowed and actually blotted out in this attitude: that in a genuinely democratic political milieu, an elected local (even national) government leader is fundamentally a public servant. The democratic political culture signifies the leadership of a public servant and not of a “father” or a “mother” of a local (or national) government unit. The latter being patriarchal/matriarchal is obviously feudal. Observing how political leadership is carried out in local government units further reveals how the barangay chair or the mayor or the governor acts and dispenses authority like a landlord (and worse still, like a taskmaster) who behaves toward his/her constituents as if they are his/her tenants (and worse still, as if they are his vassals or slaves). In the process, the latter are always beholden to the powers that be as this condition of political relation is intensified socio-culturally by the value of utang na loob which is inherently and automatically spawned in its vicious—and hence, corrupt—aspect in the context of this mode of power dispensation. And the trail of corruption in government is thus inaugurated.
Corruption, if viewed in this framework, is no longer an appalling phenomenon but a logical corollary of a political culture where double standard morality is well entrenched in the hands of the “feudal” masters who cannot be immoral. In this condition, they are the framers and definers, the interpreters and dispensers of morality that, of course, naturally benefits their social and economic circumstances expressed in their whims, caprices and wishes. Affected directly by this “political” morality is society’s economic facet. Economic advantages and opportunities are therefore automatically bestowed upon, enjoyed and, in most cases, monopolized by the “feudal” elites invincible in their coats-of-mail of power. This condition is controlled by a cabal of conspiratorial manipulators of a locale’s economic ambience. By and large, they are the ones who call the economic shots being in charge of the general run of businesses and practically all income-generating ventures, regardless of whether these enterprises are legitimate or otherwise.
In this basis, it is not always necessarily the case that the “elected” official should be a member of the elite bloc; it has been witnessed so many times that an outsider may be “elected” as long as s/he is logistically supported by the said syndicated alliance’s established machinery. Being elected in this framework further cultivates the viciousness of utang na loob as the “elected” official becomes constrained by the present circumstances to return to her/his patrons the favor that sustained his/her nomination, campaign, and ultimate “victory”. In many instances, a coalition of businessmen whose power rests in their obvious advantages of sheer economic nature likewise exerts massive influence in the political field as “king makers”. The whole situation is constitutive of a system wherein the dynamics of feudalism sustain the mechanics of a capitalistic economy and a politics that appropriates the nominal components of democracy. The entire scenario is cordially accommodating to colonial conditionality where a foreign politico-economic power can legitimately gain a foothold in the domestic arena through a mutually beneficial partnership with local businessmen and business alliances that—as has been established earlier—are likewise the political powers that be. In Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance, the distinguished MIT linguist, philosopher and political analyst Noam Chomsky asserts:
“The fundamental assumption that lies behind the imperial grand strategy, often considered unnecessary to formulate because its truth is taken to be so obvious, is the guiding principle of Wilsonian idealism: We—at least the circles who provide the leadership and advise them—are good, even noble. Hence, our interventions are necessarily righteous in intent, if occasionally clumsy in execution. . . .”
In this reality, the feudal dynamics accommodate the legitimization of colonial—i.e, neo-colonial, to be more exact—presence seen through transnational investments monitored and safeguarded by well-placed “elected” local officials in both the executive and legislative branches of government serving the imperialist interest of foreign powers. This particular phenomenon is an absolute realization of how feudalism is wedded to colonialism in a marriage of convenience politically and economically empowering and hence advantageous to both the local power elites and the neo-colonial dominators—an unholy conspiracy that expectedly smashes to smithereens the sovereign platform of a purportedly independent country.
B. Personality Politics Dominates the Feudal Power Culture Scheme
The evolutionary trail of political maturity in a social circumstance runs from the most primitive to the most sophisticated with personality politics as the most primal, party politics in-between and program politics the most mature. Philippine politics as we have it in its 21st-century condition is yet dismally of the personality type. What distinctively stands out in this type of politics is the promotion of personalities over and above political parties and national development programs. Personality politics is characteristically feudal for in a feudal society, the person, achievements, exploits, authority and wealth of a feudal lord are utterly highlighted beyond anything else. This reality obviously operates in the regular and ordinary course of current Philippine political set-up and we may cite a myriad of instances to sustain our present contention.
1. One of TESDA’s scholarship grants is known as “Pangulong Gloria Scholarships”
2. Along roads and highways, we find announcements like “This road widening project is made possible under the auspices of the administration of Gov. So and so or Mayor So and so.”
3. Acronyms that reflect the initials of an incumbent local official, e.g., Serbisyong Bayan (in Quezon City where the incumbent mayor’s initials are SB for Sonny Belmonte); Linisin at Ikarangal ang Maynila (in the city of Manila where the incumbent mayor is Lim)
A local government official will surely take advantage of every possible and given opportunity to promote his/her personal advantage in the political arena and in the process amplify his/her political clout aimed at establishing and perpetuating a political domain that outlives his/her own political career but extends further to his/her progeny thereby putting up in the process a political dynasty. It is thus definitely and absolutely a feudal state of affairs.
Pre-martial law Philippine politics saw the dominance of a two-party electoral scenario where the Liberals did battle with the Nacionalistas. But the whole situation was not the real thing but simply a semblance of true party politics for what was actually highlighted was not the parties themselves and their respective platforms but the famous, even controversial, personalities within them as candidates who have achieved popularity of showbiz proportion. This is precisely the reason why it was a “no-sweat” act for a prospective candidate to cross over party lines. Nothing has actually changed in post-martial law politics. In fact, more complications have gotten in as the two-party system was overshadowed by a multiple-party system bereft of solid and genuinely practicable pro-people development platforms. This state of affairs has actually demolished the preconditions of what should have been called party politics but has instead made personality politics rampant and hence institutionalized as the name of the political game in the present dispensation—a primitive type of politics in the post-modern Western world.
C. Colonial Economic Hegemony Supportive of and Reliant on Feudal Power Culture
The power base of a “post-modern” feudal leadership is reinforced by its colonial alliance which in the case of the Philippines is chiefly with the foremost global superpower, the United States of America. The US does not only impose its economic hegemony over the Philippines but such, as always, is in intrinsic simultaneity with political supremacy. The US Department of Defense housed at Pentagon as well as the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) constantly keep an eye on the Philippine political scenario to make sure that the ones positioned in the national government will precisely toe the US foreign policy line. This situation of brazen meddling is only an aspect of a larger political intervention of imperialistic magnitude as the Balikatan Exercises continue on regularly through the blessings of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) forged between the governments of the Republic of the Philippines and the United States of America. The eminent US-based scholar, culture critique and political analyst, E. San Juan Jr, in his After Postcolonialism: Remapping the Philippines-United States Confrontations, remarks:
“The passage of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) at the end of the twentieth century signifies not a ‘return of the repressed’ but a symptom of the loss of memory, a historical amnesia that disavows the unspeakable barbarism and carnage that masked itself in ‘brotherly spirit.' For Filipinos, however, it is a ritual of trying to remember. . .”
In the guise of providing special training opportunities toward the modernization of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), the US contingents in the said military exercises also get themselves involved in actual counter-insurgency operations along with the AFP and in the process act as protectors of both the economic and political interests of the US in the Philippines. E. San Juan Jr, reminds us that
“Not yet a decade since the U.S. military bases were forced to withdraw in 1991 by nationalist demand, the passage of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) between the Republic of the Philippines and the United States in February 1998 marks the return of imperial power in a more total repudiation of Filipino sovereignty. . . . [T]he VFA grants the ex-colonizer extra-territorial rights and privileges exceeding the privileges that the United States once enjoyed in the day of the Laurel-Langley Agreement and parity rights.”
The latest news-making development about this which landed on the pages of the New York Times is the decision of US Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates
“ . . . to keep an elite 600-troop counterinsurgency operation deployed in the Philippines despite pressure to reassign its members to fulfill urgent needs elsewhere, like in Afghanistan or Iraq, according to Pentagon officials.
. . .
“Special Operations Forces are the most highly skilled in the military at capture-and-kill missions against insurgent and terrorist leaders. Within their ranks, Army Special Forces, known as the Green Berets, have for decades been training allied troops on their home soil and conducting counterinsurgency missions.”
(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/world/asia/21military.html?_r=1)
This is imperialism of the first order. In this sense, US colonial hegemony supports the local feudal power culture, on the one hand. Re this, Carol Pagaduan-Araullo comments in her BusinessWorld column, Streetwise, entitled “Standing on the Wrong Side of History” (August 28,2009):
“Even the infrastructure projects carried out by US troops and the medical-dental missions they conduct are clearly for counter-insurgency purposes contrary to the usual government and US embassy press releases that these merely underscore and reinforce the continuing “good relations” between the two countries.
“Unnamed officials spoke of pressure on the Pentagon to shift the [Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines] ( JSOTFP) to Afghanistan or Iraq. This is a clear indication that US forces are overstretched and unable to simultaneously wage and quickly win wars in two global regions as envisioned in the US neoconservatives' "Project New American Century" under Pres. George W. Bush . The decision to maintain the JSOTFP underscores both the strategic and tactical importance of maintaining US military presence in the Philippines and implies that the permanent US presence is both for local as well as global and regional reasons.
“Despite the rhetoric of “Change”, the Obama administration is at base continuing the geopolitical thrust of consolidating US hegemony in the world with minor changes in approach and methods, e.g. talking with “rogue states” instead of threatening them with preemptive first strike option, without necessarily giving up that option. This includes continuing and strengthening US military presence overseas.
“Specific to the Philippines, this translates to increasing military aid and so-called training exercises and permanent US military presence as exemplified by the JSOTFP deployment and forward operating sites in Mindanao despite the 1991 Philippine Senate decision to terminate the RP-US Military Bases Agreement.”
On the other hand, the Philippine feudal order keeps the US capitalist requirements going by providing the latter with raw agricultural, marine, forest, and mineral resources, even human labor resources. Hence, the path of Philippine economy to go capitalist is out of the question. In this connection, E. San Juan, Jr. observes:
“What is at stake is really control over the natural resources and labor power of the Filipino people via the destruction of their national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
It is the power of US imperial control that has kept Philippine economy retrogressively subservient to US colonial interests in a feudal socio-cultural environment. In other words, it is actually US imperialism (“the highest stage of capitalism”, according to Lenin) that has forced Philippine economy to be colonial and remain feudal in its socio-cultural conditionality. Noam Chomsky affirms that
“The goal of the imperial grand strategy is to prevent any challenge to the ‘power, position, and prestige of the United States.’ The quoted words are not those of Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld, or any of the other statist reactionaries who formulated the National Security Strategy of September 2002. Rather, they were spoken by the respected liberal elder statesman Dean Acheson in 1963.”
D. A Radical Dismantling of US Hegemonic Control: The Singular Saving Grace of Philippine Socio-Politico-Economic Milieu
In the face of this incontrovertible reality, the more enlightened sector of the population which consists of the proletariat, the petit bourgeois professionals, academics and businessmen, the progressive segment of the clergy, as well as the small entrepreneurs advocating national industrialization are the cutting edge to appropriately initiate and eventually realize a radical transformation of the socio-cultural and economic dynamics that animate the present state of affairs of Philippine politics. In operational terms, this radical transformation is systemic and structural aimed at dismantling US hegemonic control over the Philippines as it becomes clearer that the most crucial issue at hand is the final and total achievement of the nation’s authentic sovereignty. How? When? These are the six-million-dollar questions we need to seriously consider next.
However, the better next step before we get to the “how” and “when” concerns is to look for concrete models of erstwhile colonies in the international community—countries that have defied, resisted, rebelled, fought and finally triumphed over their former colonial masters and are now sovereign in the most realistic sense of the word. It is of prime significance to realize that revolutionary actions leading to the final emancipation of a nation do not necessarily start off with the daring guts of the people but with a pure inspiration from which genuine courage is astonishingly developed even in the basest case of utter cowardice.
The most critical challenge at this point in time is for us to earnestly start looking for these models. This writer is of the opinion that they are just around.
Ruel F. Pepa
Trinity University of Asia
A. A General Overview
Despite all the trappings of modern democratic mechanics—the superficial exteriorities institutionalized as official components of Philippine politics—the landscape of our realpolitik is still—as it has long been in generations—predominated by two vigorous sets of dynamics—socio-culturally feudal and economically colonial. About the socio-cultural dynamics, Prof. Jose Ma. Sison initially stresses in the text of his lecture at UP-Diliman on 25 April 1986 entitled “Crisis of Philippine Culture” that
“ . . . [C]ulture is not simply the ideological reflection of current forces and contradictions in the economy and politics. It is also the accumulation of notions, customs, habits and the like which date as far back as prehistory, and which persist in current circumstances for so long as there are carriers and they are part of the social psychology of the people.”
In this light, simply reflecting on the attitude of local elected leaders toward themselves reveals a common feudal character whose acquired meaning in ages has seemed to be as natural as it is mouthed with confident spontaneity: they are the “fathers” or the “mothers” of their respective constituencies—villages, municipalities, provinces, even the nation itself. Something essentially crucial is overshadowed and actually blotted out in this attitude: that in a genuinely democratic political milieu, an elected local (even national) government leader is fundamentally a public servant. The democratic political culture signifies the leadership of a public servant and not of a “father” or a “mother” of a local (or national) government unit. The latter being patriarchal/matriarchal is obviously feudal. Observing how political leadership is carried out in local government units further reveals how the barangay chair or the mayor or the governor acts and dispenses authority like a landlord (and worse still, like a taskmaster) who behaves toward his/her constituents as if they are his/her tenants (and worse still, as if they are his vassals or slaves). In the process, the latter are always beholden to the powers that be as this condition of political relation is intensified socio-culturally by the value of utang na loob which is inherently and automatically spawned in its vicious—and hence, corrupt—aspect in the context of this mode of power dispensation. And the trail of corruption in government is thus inaugurated.
Corruption, if viewed in this framework, is no longer an appalling phenomenon but a logical corollary of a political culture where double standard morality is well entrenched in the hands of the “feudal” masters who cannot be immoral. In this condition, they are the framers and definers, the interpreters and dispensers of morality that, of course, naturally benefits their social and economic circumstances expressed in their whims, caprices and wishes. Affected directly by this “political” morality is society’s economic facet. Economic advantages and opportunities are therefore automatically bestowed upon, enjoyed and, in most cases, monopolized by the “feudal” elites invincible in their coats-of-mail of power. This condition is controlled by a cabal of conspiratorial manipulators of a locale’s economic ambience. By and large, they are the ones who call the economic shots being in charge of the general run of businesses and practically all income-generating ventures, regardless of whether these enterprises are legitimate or otherwise.
In this basis, it is not always necessarily the case that the “elected” official should be a member of the elite bloc; it has been witnessed so many times that an outsider may be “elected” as long as s/he is logistically supported by the said syndicated alliance’s established machinery. Being elected in this framework further cultivates the viciousness of utang na loob as the “elected” official becomes constrained by the present circumstances to return to her/his patrons the favor that sustained his/her nomination, campaign, and ultimate “victory”. In many instances, a coalition of businessmen whose power rests in their obvious advantages of sheer economic nature likewise exerts massive influence in the political field as “king makers”. The whole situation is constitutive of a system wherein the dynamics of feudalism sustain the mechanics of a capitalistic economy and a politics that appropriates the nominal components of democracy. The entire scenario is cordially accommodating to colonial conditionality where a foreign politico-economic power can legitimately gain a foothold in the domestic arena through a mutually beneficial partnership with local businessmen and business alliances that—as has been established earlier—are likewise the political powers that be. In Hegemony or Survival: America’s Quest for Global Dominance, the distinguished MIT linguist, philosopher and political analyst Noam Chomsky asserts:
“The fundamental assumption that lies behind the imperial grand strategy, often considered unnecessary to formulate because its truth is taken to be so obvious, is the guiding principle of Wilsonian idealism: We—at least the circles who provide the leadership and advise them—are good, even noble. Hence, our interventions are necessarily righteous in intent, if occasionally clumsy in execution. . . .”
In this reality, the feudal dynamics accommodate the legitimization of colonial—i.e, neo-colonial, to be more exact—presence seen through transnational investments monitored and safeguarded by well-placed “elected” local officials in both the executive and legislative branches of government serving the imperialist interest of foreign powers. This particular phenomenon is an absolute realization of how feudalism is wedded to colonialism in a marriage of convenience politically and economically empowering and hence advantageous to both the local power elites and the neo-colonial dominators—an unholy conspiracy that expectedly smashes to smithereens the sovereign platform of a purportedly independent country.
B. Personality Politics Dominates the Feudal Power Culture Scheme
The evolutionary trail of political maturity in a social circumstance runs from the most primitive to the most sophisticated with personality politics as the most primal, party politics in-between and program politics the most mature. Philippine politics as we have it in its 21st-century condition is yet dismally of the personality type. What distinctively stands out in this type of politics is the promotion of personalities over and above political parties and national development programs. Personality politics is characteristically feudal for in a feudal society, the person, achievements, exploits, authority and wealth of a feudal lord are utterly highlighted beyond anything else. This reality obviously operates in the regular and ordinary course of current Philippine political set-up and we may cite a myriad of instances to sustain our present contention.
1. One of TESDA’s scholarship grants is known as “Pangulong Gloria Scholarships”
2. Along roads and highways, we find announcements like “This road widening project is made possible under the auspices of the administration of Gov. So and so or Mayor So and so.”
3. Acronyms that reflect the initials of an incumbent local official, e.g., Serbisyong Bayan (in Quezon City where the incumbent mayor’s initials are SB for Sonny Belmonte); Linisin at Ikarangal ang Maynila (in the city of Manila where the incumbent mayor is Lim)
A local government official will surely take advantage of every possible and given opportunity to promote his/her personal advantage in the political arena and in the process amplify his/her political clout aimed at establishing and perpetuating a political domain that outlives his/her own political career but extends further to his/her progeny thereby putting up in the process a political dynasty. It is thus definitely and absolutely a feudal state of affairs.
Pre-martial law Philippine politics saw the dominance of a two-party electoral scenario where the Liberals did battle with the Nacionalistas. But the whole situation was not the real thing but simply a semblance of true party politics for what was actually highlighted was not the parties themselves and their respective platforms but the famous, even controversial, personalities within them as candidates who have achieved popularity of showbiz proportion. This is precisely the reason why it was a “no-sweat” act for a prospective candidate to cross over party lines. Nothing has actually changed in post-martial law politics. In fact, more complications have gotten in as the two-party system was overshadowed by a multiple-party system bereft of solid and genuinely practicable pro-people development platforms. This state of affairs has actually demolished the preconditions of what should have been called party politics but has instead made personality politics rampant and hence institutionalized as the name of the political game in the present dispensation—a primitive type of politics in the post-modern Western world.
C. Colonial Economic Hegemony Supportive of and Reliant on Feudal Power Culture
The power base of a “post-modern” feudal leadership is reinforced by its colonial alliance which in the case of the Philippines is chiefly with the foremost global superpower, the United States of America. The US does not only impose its economic hegemony over the Philippines but such, as always, is in intrinsic simultaneity with political supremacy. The US Department of Defense housed at Pentagon as well as the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) constantly keep an eye on the Philippine political scenario to make sure that the ones positioned in the national government will precisely toe the US foreign policy line. This situation of brazen meddling is only an aspect of a larger political intervention of imperialistic magnitude as the Balikatan Exercises continue on regularly through the blessings of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) forged between the governments of the Republic of the Philippines and the United States of America. The eminent US-based scholar, culture critique and political analyst, E. San Juan Jr, in his After Postcolonialism: Remapping the Philippines-United States Confrontations, remarks:
“The passage of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) at the end of the twentieth century signifies not a ‘return of the repressed’ but a symptom of the loss of memory, a historical amnesia that disavows the unspeakable barbarism and carnage that masked itself in ‘brotherly spirit.' For Filipinos, however, it is a ritual of trying to remember. . .”
In the guise of providing special training opportunities toward the modernization of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), the US contingents in the said military exercises also get themselves involved in actual counter-insurgency operations along with the AFP and in the process act as protectors of both the economic and political interests of the US in the Philippines. E. San Juan Jr, reminds us that
“Not yet a decade since the U.S. military bases were forced to withdraw in 1991 by nationalist demand, the passage of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) between the Republic of the Philippines and the United States in February 1998 marks the return of imperial power in a more total repudiation of Filipino sovereignty. . . . [T]he VFA grants the ex-colonizer extra-territorial rights and privileges exceeding the privileges that the United States once enjoyed in the day of the Laurel-Langley Agreement and parity rights.”
The latest news-making development about this which landed on the pages of the New York Times is the decision of US Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates
“ . . . to keep an elite 600-troop counterinsurgency operation deployed in the Philippines despite pressure to reassign its members to fulfill urgent needs elsewhere, like in Afghanistan or Iraq, according to Pentagon officials.
. . .
“Special Operations Forces are the most highly skilled in the military at capture-and-kill missions against insurgent and terrorist leaders. Within their ranks, Army Special Forces, known as the Green Berets, have for decades been training allied troops on their home soil and conducting counterinsurgency missions.”
(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/21/world/asia/21military.html?_r=1)
This is imperialism of the first order. In this sense, US colonial hegemony supports the local feudal power culture, on the one hand. Re this, Carol Pagaduan-Araullo comments in her BusinessWorld column, Streetwise, entitled “Standing on the Wrong Side of History” (August 28,2009):
“Even the infrastructure projects carried out by US troops and the medical-dental missions they conduct are clearly for counter-insurgency purposes contrary to the usual government and US embassy press releases that these merely underscore and reinforce the continuing “good relations” between the two countries.
“Unnamed officials spoke of pressure on the Pentagon to shift the [Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines] ( JSOTFP) to Afghanistan or Iraq. This is a clear indication that US forces are overstretched and unable to simultaneously wage and quickly win wars in two global regions as envisioned in the US neoconservatives' "Project New American Century" under Pres. George W. Bush . The decision to maintain the JSOTFP underscores both the strategic and tactical importance of maintaining US military presence in the Philippines and implies that the permanent US presence is both for local as well as global and regional reasons.
“Despite the rhetoric of “Change”, the Obama administration is at base continuing the geopolitical thrust of consolidating US hegemony in the world with minor changes in approach and methods, e.g. talking with “rogue states” instead of threatening them with preemptive first strike option, without necessarily giving up that option. This includes continuing and strengthening US military presence overseas.
“Specific to the Philippines, this translates to increasing military aid and so-called training exercises and permanent US military presence as exemplified by the JSOTFP deployment and forward operating sites in Mindanao despite the 1991 Philippine Senate decision to terminate the RP-US Military Bases Agreement.”
On the other hand, the Philippine feudal order keeps the US capitalist requirements going by providing the latter with raw agricultural, marine, forest, and mineral resources, even human labor resources. Hence, the path of Philippine economy to go capitalist is out of the question. In this connection, E. San Juan, Jr. observes:
“What is at stake is really control over the natural resources and labor power of the Filipino people via the destruction of their national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
It is the power of US imperial control that has kept Philippine economy retrogressively subservient to US colonial interests in a feudal socio-cultural environment. In other words, it is actually US imperialism (“the highest stage of capitalism”, according to Lenin) that has forced Philippine economy to be colonial and remain feudal in its socio-cultural conditionality. Noam Chomsky affirms that
“The goal of the imperial grand strategy is to prevent any challenge to the ‘power, position, and prestige of the United States.’ The quoted words are not those of Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld, or any of the other statist reactionaries who formulated the National Security Strategy of September 2002. Rather, they were spoken by the respected liberal elder statesman Dean Acheson in 1963.”
D. A Radical Dismantling of US Hegemonic Control: The Singular Saving Grace of Philippine Socio-Politico-Economic Milieu
In the face of this incontrovertible reality, the more enlightened sector of the population which consists of the proletariat, the petit bourgeois professionals, academics and businessmen, the progressive segment of the clergy, as well as the small entrepreneurs advocating national industrialization are the cutting edge to appropriately initiate and eventually realize a radical transformation of the socio-cultural and economic dynamics that animate the present state of affairs of Philippine politics. In operational terms, this radical transformation is systemic and structural aimed at dismantling US hegemonic control over the Philippines as it becomes clearer that the most crucial issue at hand is the final and total achievement of the nation’s authentic sovereignty. How? When? These are the six-million-dollar questions we need to seriously consider next.
However, the better next step before we get to the “how” and “when” concerns is to look for concrete models of erstwhile colonies in the international community—countries that have defied, resisted, rebelled, fought and finally triumphed over their former colonial masters and are now sovereign in the most realistic sense of the word. It is of prime significance to realize that revolutionary actions leading to the final emancipation of a nation do not necessarily start off with the daring guts of the people but with a pure inspiration from which genuine courage is astonishingly developed even in the basest case of utter cowardice.
The most critical challenge at this point in time is for us to earnestly start looking for these models. This writer is of the opinion that they are just around.
Thursday, September 3, 2009
ACADEMIC CREDIBILITY GETTING LOST IN THE JUNGLE OF ABSURDITY
This is the most infamous idiocy we now encounter in less-credible Philippine universities and colleges: academics possessed with the guts to brag their graduate and/or post-graduate degrees as if these are the end-all of their existence—unmindful of THE WEIGHTIER SUBSTANCE OF SCHOLARSHIP expected of the schooling that they spent to get their degrees. This circumstance is further complicated by bestowing these people with the title “Professor.” On a closer look, the worst is, almost none of them have actually produced serious writings and research studies of scholarly worth much less, being quoted and/or cited in prestigious refereed journals and volumes of deep sophistication.
The eyes of pride and arrogance light up as these pretenders are addressed “Doctor” or “Professor.” But in reality, their conceit and haughtiness emanate from the higher salaries they get by virtue of the academic degrees they boast. They are the paper tigers of the academe. The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) is the only institution that recognizes their importance (if they are truly important); not the more trustworthy scholars and scholarly societies based in more credible academic locales. No reason is therefore engendered to persuade “the authentics” to offer lectureship stint to “the pseudos.” The real won’t dare.
This condition in the Philippines has been so rampant and hence alarming. In the face of this reality, “academic excellence” claimed by most universities and colleges has gone equivocal and hence meaningless.
© Ruel F. Pepa, 3 September 2009
The eyes of pride and arrogance light up as these pretenders are addressed “Doctor” or “Professor.” But in reality, their conceit and haughtiness emanate from the higher salaries they get by virtue of the academic degrees they boast. They are the paper tigers of the academe. The Commission on Higher Education (CHED) is the only institution that recognizes their importance (if they are truly important); not the more trustworthy scholars and scholarly societies based in more credible academic locales. No reason is therefore engendered to persuade “the authentics” to offer lectureship stint to “the pseudos.” The real won’t dare.
This condition in the Philippines has been so rampant and hence alarming. In the face of this reality, “academic excellence” claimed by most universities and colleges has gone equivocal and hence meaningless.
© Ruel F. Pepa, 3 September 2009
Friday, August 28, 2009
Trinity Should Do Away with ISO 9000; There are Other More Important Priorities
Trinity University of Asia should seriously be guided by the research studies done on ISO 9000 by Dr. John Seddon. In doing so, Trinity is expected to be enlightened and hence decide to finally abandon the ISO 9000 folly. Instead, it should start thinking of whether it has established its own niche in the field of academe or not. If not, that should be its major concern now. To get to that concern, Trinity should be introspective and realize that it has to be serious in injecting new blood into its vein stream. It could be likened to a patient who needs to be drained of contaminated blood so that fresh blood may be transfused. The new blood is the more competent faculty.
Once these more competent scholars start to constitute the faculty, a new profile of the University spontaneously develops and more people will begin to respect it. Respect of the quality of education is the people’s response to the school’s prestige—something that cannot be hidden from their discriminating eyes.
In the final analysis, respect is still the reliable indicator of the people’s decision to send their children to a prestigious school. But it is worth remembering that prestige is gradually achieved in a setting conditioned by the presence of competent, creative and courageous teachers and scholars.
© Ruel F. Pepa, 28 August 2009
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